Career Songwriter

With the holidays just behind us, the beginning of a new term at Berkleemusic is only a week away. Silent night has transitioned into unfinished choruses and verses in Dorian mode, so I’d like to provide a little information on what types of songwriting courses will be available to tie up those lonely sections. Please refer to the course catalog descriptions when making your decisions, but feel free to use my descriptions below as supplemental material.

Lyric Writing: Tools and Strategies
This course is an overview of some of the structural, rhyming, and content building tools you’ll use in your daily songwriting. The value of this course lies in the consistent object writing and daily application of these tools, providing you with a solid foundation for writing with more intention. If you are a beginning songwriter, this course is a great place to start. If you are an advanced songwriter, this course is a great place to flourish. The lesson plan is specific, but the content you write depends entirely on your preferences. For that reason, it’s a great class to take to build on your skills and also build a catalog of lyrics.

Lyric Writing: Writing Lyrics to Music
This course is exactly how it sounds – you’ll be writing lyrics to match already written melodies online. If you find that you write music before lyrics and then stumble about during the lyric writing process, you’ll find what you need here. You’ll work to improve the conversational quality of your lyrics, identify title positions and understand the stress patterns of both lyrical phrases and melodic phrases.

Commercial Songwriting Techniques
In this course you’ll be writing music and lyric, and posting several full songs throughout the 12 weeks. Our focus is on content and learning how to brainstorm for it, organize it, and design it into song forms that are commercially viable. With a new process, you’ll find rhymes, structural clues, and titles through a style of writing called Destination Writing. Gather tools for writing music that enhances the lyrical message and more effectively engages your listener. If you’re motivated and looking to push the borders of your writing, you would enjoy this class.

Lyric Writing: Writing From The Title
In this course you’ll let the title guide you in developing the rest of the song lyric. A widely used and effective technique, using the title to spark ideas will quicken your writing process, lend more commercial quality, and improve your storytelling. We’ll work with rhythm, letting the title inspire rhythmic consistency throughout the rest of the song, and discover how broader rhymes can lend more possibility instead of keep us cornered at the ends of lines. This course also involves posting musical bits and pieces.